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Sullivan’s Travels
Presented in association with 98.1 Classical KING FM and Write Bros.
Preston Sturges’s great Depression-era (that epoch on everyone’s minds lately) comedy/drama has big-shot movie director Sullivan (Joel McCrea) pondering the question of art vs. commerce. Sully wants to make the important, socially conscious O Brother, Where Art Thou? while his studio bosses want another hit like his last, Ants in Your Pants of 1939. But Sully wants his next film to be more relevant, and the resulting back and forth with the bosses offers quintessential rapid-fire Sturges dialogue:
Sullivan: This picture is an answer to Communists. It shows we’re awake and not dunking our heads in the sand like a bunch of ostriches. I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions, stark realism, the problems that confront the average man.
Boss: But with a little sex.
Sullivan: A little, but I don’t want to stress it. I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity—a true canvas of the suffering of humanity.
Boss: But with a little sex.
Sullivan: With a little sex in it.
Boss: How about a nice musical?
Sullivan sets out on his own to research the picture for himself masquerading as a hobo (with a luxurious studio van in tow), and assistant Veronica Lake (disguised as a wild boy of the road). Along the way discovers a lot about human misery and the value of comedy.
“In the aftermath of the Great Depression, Sturges created a strange hybrid: a film that movingly searches the grim depths of poverty, prisons, and chain gangs; and a film that is, in the end, a hilarious exposé of its own well-established concern. Prefigures Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers, but remains unique in American cinema.” —Judy Bloch, Pacific Film Archive
Cast & Crew
Director: Preston Sturges
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